Everything is coming up hydrangeas as thousands flock to 10-day Cape Cod festival

Editor's note: Due to an editing error, the Art Fest event in this story contained an incorrect day. The Artisan Faire is Saturday, July 8.

Vacationers from far-flung places have long been drawn to Cape Cod’s “sand dunes and salty air,quaint little villages here and there” or so goes the Patti Page song. In more recent years, the Cape has cultivated another source of pride with its talent for growing the colorful masses of hydrangeas that spill their extravagance along Cape Cod’s garden paths from summer through fall.

These flowering landscapes will welcome visitors from July 7-16 at the Cape Cod Hydrangea Festival, a Capewide summer garden celebration now blooming for its ninth year. The 10-day fest offers a profusion of garden tours, workshops, talks, walks and the chance for visitors to share their garden stories with other like-minded attendees who love the flamboyant flowering plants.

Summer by the sea

Greta Georgieva, programs and events manager for the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, which co-sponsors the annual fest, noted that the Cape will welcome visitors “from all over” who are coordinating their vacations around the color-filled garden event. This year, Georgieva said, requests have come from states across the country, from New England to California. One reason for the surge of interest, she said, may just be due to national exposure the festival has received in recent years through a segment aired on the television show CBS Sunday Morning as well as coverage in national magazines, all touting the Cape as a mecca for hydrangea lovers everywhere.

According to Cape Cod gardening expert C.L. Fornari, a lead founder of the Hydrangea Festival in 2015, the CBS program “introduced a lot of people to hydrangeas.” And, she said, “Every year is special. ... People get to see a Cape Cod they would not otherwise get to see.”

A small sampling of upcoming events may help participants make the most of their time at the festival.

Take a walk ...

The event’s main attraction is its rare opportunity to get a sneak peek inside someone else’s garden gate. More than 70 knockout home gardens, from Falmouth to Provincetown, will be open to the public throughout the festival. Each location pairs with a nonprofit organization that will receive 100% of the admission proceeds ($5, payable at each location).

Garden tours are self-guided, though some hosts offer special talks and demos to visitors. Linda Coven’s West Yarmouth garden welcomed 950 visitors during last year’s festival, arriving from all 50 states, and this year she’s added new garden areas as well as more pollinator plantings to augment the regional Pollinator Pathways program.

During her garden tours (July 9, 10, 12, 13, 16) Coven, a past president and vice president of the Cape Cod Hydrangea Society, offers demonstrations of the Pot-n-Pot container gardening method she has developed alongside Mal Condon, longtime curator of hydrangeas at Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, who is nationally known as "The Hydrangea Guy."

The creative containers, she explained, consist of a large outer pot containing perennial plants, and a smaller, “inner” pot that changes with the seasons, showing off hydrangeas in summer and fall. The inner pots of hydrangeas, she said, can safely “winter over” in an unheated garage or basement, or a space like Coven’s home-built greenhouse-like structure, protected by thick poly sheets that keep out the wind chill. And new, more climate-hardy species are being developed for home gardens all the time, she said.

... Visit a special spot

Take a guided tour through the historic landscape of the Nye Museum in East Sandwich (11 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 14). Self-guided walks at Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily) offer a look at “over 155 species and cultivate varieties” of hydrangeas. Walk the “Pollinator Pathway” among 100 planters on Main Street Hyannis, with volunteers from Master Gardeners of Cape Cod (10 to 10:45 a.m. daily during the festival), and learn how their flowers offer a sustaining pathway for threatened pollinating insects.  

Tips for home gardens

At Highfield Hall & Gardens, Amy Cardello, of North Falmouth’s Pleasant View Gardens, will talk about “Proven Winners” that offer color, hardiness and resistance to disease, for the home garden (4:30 p.m. Friday, July 7). C. L. Fornari, “Cape Cod’s Garden Lady,” hosts a Virtual Hydrangea Happy Hour (5 p.m. Friday, July 7 on Zoom), for a back-and-forth Q&A with attendees, and she speaks at Hyannis Country Garden (3 p.m. Sunday, July 8) on “A Hydrangea for Every Garden,” bringing along samples of new plants that are “bud-hardy” in many climate conditions. Garden designer Barbara Connelly suggests companion plantings that complement hydrangeas (3 p.m. Tuesday, July 11, Hyannis Country Garden).

Art at the fest

Among many art venues scheduled for the festival, the Soares Flower Garden Nursery in East Falmouth hosts a benefit Artisan Faire of “garden-inspired” handmade items, pots, jewelry and botanical art by local artists (10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 8). During tours of her West Yarmouth gardens, Coven hosts Vermont-based iron artist James Takaki (July 9, 10, 12, 13), who displays his creative metal garden fancies. Stroll the sights and sounds at summer-busy Hyannis Harbor, where artists are at work in colorful Artist Shanties (11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily). Watch local artists painting en plein air in the Sculpture Garden at Cape Cod Museum of Art (2 to 3 p.m. Wednesday, July 12).

A written guide

A complete schedule for the Hydrangea Festival is online at CapeCodHydrangeaFest.com/

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod Hydrangea Festival: 10 glorious days of Cape's best bloom